Many learning and development professionals are starting to embrace design thinking in their enterprise learning. Contrary to what you’re probably thinking, this shift isn’t about aesthetics – it’s about applying the principles of design to the way people work and learn. According to Bersin by Deloitte,

“Design thinking” is the focus on ‘user-centric’ design, studying the behavior and working scenarios of our employees, and then designing solutions that fit into their work-lives, versus designing ‘processes’ or ‘programs’ that have to be ‘rolled out’ to the workforce.”

Design thinking has emerged on the scene as a response to the increasing complexity of modern technology and business. The emphasis on user-centric design in technology makes complex systems simple, intuitive and even pleasurable. The set of principles, known as design thinking, can be applied to eLearning to create responsive, impactful learning experiences.

Principle #1: Focus on the learner’s emotional response

Focus on experiences that will build empathy with your learners. Emotion is important in learning because it “drives attention, which in turn drives learning and memory,” according to Robert Sylwester, the Professor of Education at the University of Oregon. You can use design thinking in your eLearning by using emotional language, such as words that concern desires, aspirations, engagement and experience.

Principle #2: Create models to examine complex problems

Design thinking is increasingly applied to complex, intangible issues (e.g. how a customer experiences a service your employee has been trained to provide). Use diagrams and sketches to supplement spreadsheets, specifications, storyboards or other documents to add fluid dimension to the exploration of complexity. In turn, it allows for nonlinear thought when solving nonlinear problems.

Principle #3: Use prototypes to explore potential solutions

Prototypes may be digital, physical or diagrammatic, but each one is a way to communicate an idea. By putting value in the exploration and experimentation of prototyping, you can transform an idea into something truly unique and valuable – because on their own, ideas are a dime a dozen. Turn your idea into something tangible, seek collaboration from your peers and regularly seek feedback from your colleagues.

Principle #4: Tolerate failure

Design thinking doesn’t encourage failure, but it does recognize that it’s rare to get it right the first time. The ethos of design learning is leveraging failure as learning, so do not penalize your learners on the first attempt at their final assessment, take their failure to pass as a learning opportunity and follow-up to assess if they need additional support.

Principle #5: Exhibit restraint

eLearning experts are probably all too familiar about what their eLearning should contain, and just as important, what it should not contain. It’s very tempting to add all the bells and whistles, but by removing extra features and excessive information, your eLearning solution can offer a clear, simple experience for your learners.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing your eLearning. One of our goals at Webanywhere is to modernize enterprise learning solutions, which extend to open source LMS platforms, custom training solutions design, media services and our very own rapid content authoring tool/content management system hybrid for modern professionals, Promatum.

Jessica Arenz brings out the best of both worlds as an Instructional Designer and Marketing Executive at Webanywhere. She’s passionate about proper brand messaging and retail training and development. Throughout her career she has worked on eLearning for companies like Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger and Saks Fifth Avenue, to name a few. Jessica is one of many talented individuals on our team ready to collaborate with you on your next learning solution.

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Wearables

Health insurance providers are offering discounted smartwatches to customers, as they can incentivize users to keep fit. The data grabbed gives an overview of activity levels, which can lead to cheaper premiums, even if it does seem slightly Orwellian. There are also free online ‘healthy living’ courses with qualifications, that could show the provider that you’re serious about staying fit and well.

Employee Health Schemes

Companies that offer health benefits are implementing strategies to reduce the soaring costs incurred. One strategy is to use elearning, utilizing an LMS like Totara Learn, to educate employees on best practices for maintaining good health, such as exercising, drinking in moderation and taking advantage of regular health checks offered under the policy.

Some companies even offer elearning courses to help employees stop smoking. And considering it’s the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., it makes sense for organizations to encourage their workforce to stop.

Car Insurance

Although a negative stereotype, young drivers have a bad rep. This means 16 to 25 year olds can suffer extremely high premiums. Some insurance companies offer telemetry devices that are installed in cars to prove how safe the driver is, while the DMV recommend online and practical courses to educate young drivers in safe driving techniques. Both these approaches can lead to cheaper car insurance.

Health and Safety

With commercials bombarding us with lawyers urging us to make a claim for a workplace accident, it’s no wonder the cost of Employer Liability insurance is so high. This is why so many SMEs decide not to take out a policy, which is an incredible risk. But even large organizations are struggling with ever-increasing premiums, as so many claims are made. This is why a top-notch compliance elearning program is imperative for every company to try and avoid being seen as negligent. And this needs to cover more than just occupational hazards, as discrimination claims are on the rise. Employees need to be aware of what constitutes prejudice in the workplace.

While you might think people already know the risks posed from unhealthy living, driving erratically or how to use a ladder safely, educating the insured obviously pays dividends. And if elearning and other forms of teaching help to keep premiums lower, we should all be on board with that.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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If you are responsible for designing successful elearning, read on for tips on adding interactivity to make it more interesting, fun and effective.

Use interactive scenarios based on real-life work situations

One of the best ways of engaging the learner is by including real-life situations that show how the learning material can be applied to actual work situations. Using images and/or video to show a scenario in which the learning material is applied and adding a small quiz or game afterwards (known as gamification in the field of elearning) will help make learning more challenging and the content more memorable.

Make the elearning course social

Encourage learners to collaborate with each other by adding a forum, social media page or chat room to the elearning course. Encourage students throughout the course to take any questions or comments they have to other students through any of the available communication channels. Adding a collaborative element will allow students to share their experience and discuss learning topics. It can also help improve student understanding and retention of the course material.

Make it look good

Adding multimedia elements to your course and designing it to look more aesthetically appealing will increase the desire to interact with the content. Use good looking and easy to read fonts. Add attention grabbing graphic elements such as images, infographics and videos that provide additional information to help the learner better understand the material. Also make sure that you maintain a consistent style throughout the course.

Add quizzes throughout

After each lesson or section you could add a test. If your learning platform delivers tracking of progress, this will help the creators/facilitators gauge how effective their course is, as well as allowing students to assess their progress and get an overview of what they learned. Include real-life scenarios in the quizzes so students can get an idea of how they would use their newly acquired knowledge/skills in the workplace.

Including quizzes helps break up the learning content, preventing students from getting bored. It can also help improve retention rates.

High quality elearning can have a significant impact on your organization’s training delivery and consequently, its bottom line. Designing more interactive elearning courses will help boost organizational learning and improve your competitive edge.

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The summer holiday downtime is when many business leaders are taking stock of the year to date and making plans for improvement to the end of the year and the following year ahead. Let’s have a look at some of the most important trends in online training that could and should be influential in planning your elearning in 2016.

Gamification

Gamification is not a completely new trend, but it has been gaining some serious traction in the last few years. More and more research is indicating that incorporating game dynamics into an e-learning program can enhance learning outcomes significantly.

Developing effective games for online training courses is still a time-expensive process that, if not performed correctly, won’t bring the desired results. To make sure you use gamification effectively, it is important that the elearning games are based on proven learning research.

More and more elearning consultancies are specializing in gamification, bringing better and more cost-effective solutions to the market. This makes it more interesting for organisations to hop on the gamification band wagon.

We predict that in 2016, gamification is really going to take off. If you’ve not been experimenting with gamified learning yet, now is the time to get started.

Big Data

Big Data is the buzzword in most technology-focused these days, including the elearning industry.

Big Data analytics tools are getting more and more sophisticated, but also easier and cheaper to use. Analysing your organisation’s learning data and combining it with external learning data sources can provide important insights about your e-learning programs and how to go about improving course content and optimizing your learning strategy.

By analysing individual and group learning patterns, courses can be personalised in a way that realises the best learning results for both the individual and the organization as a whole.

The more data is being stored and the more advanced Big Data analytics tools become, the more useful it will be for elearning. It may be just the right time to start looking at using Big Data to improve your elearning programs.

Cloud e-Learning

Many organizations have already migrated to a cloud e-learning solution, but it looks like cloud computing will become even more important in 2016. Organizations that have been reluctant to adopt cloud technology (often due to security concerns) are changing their attitudes.

The added functionalities, ease of use and uncomplicated maintenance that cloud software offers will convince even more organisations to make the switch in 2016.

Social Learning

Social media isn’t just for sharing your latest holiday or party photos. It can also be used as an effective personal learning tool. Social media is already being used as a tool for connecting with people that work across international teams or within complementary organizations within the same industry, sharing and discussing ideas, and collaborating on projects.

There are many ways in which social media can aid with learning. For example, Facebook groups can be used in an eLearning course to discuss learning topics and make it easier for student to help each other out without having to be in the same room. Twitter can be used to get in touch with subject matter experts, stir up discussions and curate interesting content about the eLearning topic.

We believe that social media will play an ever more important role in learning throughout 2016 and beyond.

Automation in eLearning Course Development

Right now, elearning design and creation is still a very time intensive process. This may change significantly in the next few years though. Automated content creation solutions are becoming more and more sophisticated, allowing content providers to create and curate great elearning content with minimal effort.

elearning elements that used to take a long time to develop, such as exercises, quizzes, tests and games, can now be generated using automated solutions. The most advanced tools scan the course content and determine which are the most important parts to be included in tests.

These solutions will only get better, allowing for significant time and cost savings in the development of elearning courses. They can also provide a more individualized learning experience by analyzing a student’s performance and learning preferences. Based on this information, course content (including tests) can be personalized.

Augmented Reality

While 2016 may not yet see an explosion of augmented reality use within elearning, it is an area that is under intense development. Augmented reality devices such as Google Glass and Oculus Rift may become part of everyday life in the future and will surely become more popular in elearning.

These devices allow environments to be adapted (virtually) to improve the learning experience. For example, an online course about astronomy could use augmented reality glasses to give a tour of the moon without the student having to leave their home or office. For a French class, the glasses could display a French classroom, better immersing the student in the language learning process.

Augmented reality is still very much in its infancy, but the potential uses are fascinating.

Personalized Learning

One thing that comes up with most of the trends discussed above is that of personalized elearning:

• Automated eLearning tools are already using (big) data to create a more personalized learning experience.
• Cloud eLearning solutions allow individuals to study at times when it suits them best and from wherever they feel most comfortable.
• Using social media for learning allows the individual to enhance their learning experience in whichever way helps them most.

More personalized learning will allow students to achieve better results and have a more enjoyable learning experience. In most cases it will also allow them shorten the learning time frame.

If you’ve let all of the trends discussed above pass by until now, it may be time to look into modernizing your organization’s elearning strategy. While some of these trends are still very complicated or expensive to implement, others are already quite mature and require a minimal effort for a potentially great ROI.

One thing that is 100% certain is that exciting times are ahead in the elearning industry, and the world’s largest and most progressive organizations will be the first to adopt them.

Still Not Sure How to Proceed?

Webanywhere have helped thousands of organizations worldwide to implement and maximize the benefits of the latest in elearning. Please contact us for an informal discussion of your goals and requirements.

The post Planning E-learning in 2016: Influential Trends in Online Training appeared first on Webanywhere.

However, traditional classroom based training presents a number of challenges. It is not always the most convenient for healthcare professionals as it usually involves travelling and that takes away the time that could be spent caring for patients. Using classroom based training may be difficult to organize because healthcare professionals are often very busy. Travelling involved in the training and using valuable time away from jobs can make classroom based training very expensive.

Mobile learning is among the fastest growing areas of elearning technologies. The potential that mobile learning has in the healthcare sector is huge and it is being recognised as the training solution that can provide accessible and flexible training for healthcare professionals. Here are some of the main benefits of mobile learning for healthcare professionals.

Cost

Mobile learning can help to save money spent on training as it does not require to spend money on travelling and learners do not need to spend any time away from work.

Accessibility

Mobile learning can be accessed on mobile phones and tablets. This provides instant accessibility to learning materials which leads to quick knowledge distribution. Learning materials can be accessed from anywhere at any time which means that healthcare professionals do not need to waste the valuable time travelling to access the training.

Feedback

Instant feedback can be provided with mobile learning. This can help to increase learner motivation and engagement.

Micro learning

Mobile technologies can be used to provide training in short, bite-sized units which can make learning more effective. Micro learning makes it easy to access learning materials when needed, therefore useful information can be accessed without highly affecting the normal work day and as discussed before, the time factor is crucial for healthcare professionals.

Flexibility

Learning materials can be updated instantly as the new changes in the healthcare sector come along. New learning materials can be added to learning platforms as required and learners can be instantly notified about any changes made to their LMS.

Mobile learning is a valuable option when it comes to continued education for healthcare professionals. It can be used effectively as a part of the overall training strategy for healthcare professionals or it can completely replace the traditional classroom-based training in some cases.

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Bitesize Learning

When the FDA approves a new drug for prescription, it’s vital that resellers and health professionals receive a comprehensive and expedited training session. Promatum is innovative knowledge management software that can be used with LMS platforms such as Totara. Instead of a structured, assignment-based course, Promatum can deliver bitesize learning for manufacturers, wholesalers, employees and clients. So when a new drug is available, everyone connected with the product can receive the necessary training, tailored to their needs.

As many hospital doctors and nurses work long hours, it’s not always feasible for them to take the time to attend courses on site. The beauty of Promatum is that it can be accessed remotely – even from a cell phone – so that training can take place when it’s convenient. And with built-in tracking and reporting to see who’s engaging with the training, it’s simple to see results and pinpoint who still needs to participate.

Compliance

For drug companies with operations in countries like China and India, maintaining compliance can be problematic. India’s government is now completely rewriting their Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1940 to improve the efficacy and quality of drugs and medical devices. Essentially this is being done to allow regulation of biologics, regenerative medicines and clinical trials. Needless to say, the impact on compliance training for pharmaceuticals will be immense.

Depending on the severity of the rewrite, training may need to take place as a formally assessed course via a platform such as Totara LMS, or it could be done in smaller, one-off units through Promatum. To keep the trainees engaged and performing well, it’s important to ensure that the content is interesting, varied and interactive. Incorporating different elements such as video, games, quizzes and other interactive activities will make the learning experience more endurable and even fun. This in turn encourages learning modules to be completed quickly and effectively.

Maintaining a best practice policy for training in the pharmaceutical industry is imperative for obvious reasons and acquiring an in-depth knowledge on all the new drugs available is no easy task. Incorporating learning software such as Promatum into your existing LMS can make training far more flexible, accessible and effective. Find out more.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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I think Elearning’s been a victim of a “pack it high and sell it cheap” philosophy, with little thought into what can be done to make it engaging. Just bung in the content, get that box ticked and we can all go home. Clearly, this is untenable, particularly when elearning is not cheap – although it can, and should be, cost effective.

So, here are my seven tips to transform this elearning dystopia:

1. Making it stick

Have an introductory sting that makes the learner sit up and think, “oh, this could be interesting”. Certainly, if audio is used, a very short burst of music can help to achieve this. (To prevent irritation – as overexposure can achieve, it could be played only on first entry into the course)

2. Aesthetics is essential

Have graphics that look the part, exciting, fresh and vibrant. Now, I know there’s an awful lot of compliance-based, financial elearning out there, and how many times can you show a pile of coins or a wedge of notes? But that is boring. Go for a completely different graphical theme. Why does it have to be images of money? Think outside of the box and find a better way to grab your learner’s attention.

3. The importance of video

Use animations and video to convey information and to help explain. It is quite true that a picture paints a thousand words.

4. New sound

Returning to audio as this is now so commonly used in elearning – make sure you use an “interesting voice”. That said, make sure the audio is interruptable. You will quickly lose your audience’s attention if they have to listen to too much. (There is another question, left for another day, of why, given that the majority of people read more quickly than it takes to listen to the same text, do we use audio in the first place; like I said, that’s a blog for another occasion.)

5. Engaging

Grab your learner’s attention with a meaningful challenge if you can. Get them to think about something, so ask or present it in a challenging way. Scenario-based elearning is great for this, as are “what would happen if…..” type questions.

6. Cram

Use the available screen space judiciously – never cram too much onto a screen so it looks crowded – maintain readability at all costs. Regarding text, keep the language friendly – I’ve heard it said that because the subject is academic, so the language must be suitably academic. But this, I think, is misguided, and it puts style over substance; I’m for substance any day of the week. Use a nice font – make sure it’s not too big or too small – it’s harder to read text on a screen than it is on paper. Causes eye strain. You could engage your learner by saying, “Right, that’s enough for now – grab a beverage and come back later”!

7. Keep learners hooked

After you’ve grabbed your learner’s attention, keep them hooked by treating them like a person and giving them respect. By this, I mean, don’t ask them a trite question or one where the answers are obvious. Interactions are all well and good, and a lot of noise is made about how there must be an interaction every few screens. But why? If the learner is engaged in the course, but there simply is no sensible interaction to ask at that moment, don’t include one just for its own sake. That said, I recently had to show a table (the sort with rows and columns), and I could have just shown it and expected the learner to passively read it, but I wanted the learner to actively engage with it, so I turned the whole thing into a row by row interaction. Get them to think for a bit!

8. Empathy

Here’s a free, bonus point – it’s a surprise as you were only expecting 7, and you’re possibly going to remember it all the better for it. Put yourself in your learner’s shoes – if you don’t find it engaging you, why should a learner?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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One driver for this change is the common use of social media and video in our everyday lives, think about your use of Linkedin, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube. They all have one thing in common, a good user experience.

This is a challenge for our modern Learning and Development teams, perhaps they have built some legacy curriculum which needs updating, perhaps they are using a corporate Learning Management System which hasn’t been updated, or maybe it’s just never had any ‘design thinking.’

According to a recent report from Bersin by Deloitte with Glassdoor, learning and career opportunities have become a key driver for employees. Furthermore, Harvard Business School reported that 84% of business leaders feel it’s need to improve organisational learning.

Corporates such as Autotrader are embracing this shift, they are looking at how they can link culture, learning and environment into one to create an awesome experience for their workforce.

Autotrader offices

The role of Learning and Development Needs to Change

Think about it, with the current business world moving faster than ever, the L&D team can no longer cater for the demand for learning within the design. The relationship with L&D and the business needs to switch, from ‘learning is done by L&D’ to ‘L&D facilities the learning’. For example, a retail business recently had great success with this model, instead of inducting a new employee on a 2 week course, they reviewed a successful employees experiences for 9 months to create a journey map. They found that it was a mix of experiences both informal and formal that took place. Following this research the company built a mobile app which had the formal/ mandatory learning, but then leveraged social aspects to create the informal learning via connecting with subject matter experts in the company and meetings with clients.

In doing so, this retail business demonstrated that design thinking can work, with their evidence based research they were able to improve return on investment through the use of technology to facilitate the learning.

Webanywhere and their partners Skipton Building Society will be attending the next Yorkshire Organisational Development meeting at Asda House on the 18th of October. Guest speaker for this meet up is Myles Runham, Former Head of Digital at the BBC.

For more information, please contact us.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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